Saturday, August 2, 2014

Opinion: Setting it straight

Praise the Lord and pass the Dom Perignon! The law to ban same-sex marriage in Colorado has finally been declared unconstitutional! While an appeal from Attorney General John Suthers will likely make it to the 10th U.S. Court of Appeals, given the ruling in Utah, we can pretty much predict the outcome: a long and exhausting trip to the Supreme Court which will more than likely result in it upholding the previous court’s ruling. (Please, John, get a clue and stop cluttering up the system at the cost of taxpayers.)

Though I am absolutely thrilled about the ruling in Colorado, I must confess there’s a part of me that’s just a tad annoyed at having to always rely on straight people to give LGBT people what’s rightfully ours.

I don’t want to sound “heterophobic,” but it is very clear to me that our successes have predominantly been, and perhaps always will be, at the hands of straight people finally waking up from their homophobic delusions. While I’m truly delighted that’s happening, I have to admit I’m kind of resentful that so much, if not everything, depends on them and not us. Yes, we’ve done an awesome job by organizing, getting bills passed, raising public awareness and generally just being ourselves, but all of that success relied heavily on convincing the heterosexual population that we’re not the monsters they’ve been raised to think we are. Just sayin’.

It should make sense that by virtue of being human, LGBT people are automatically endowed with the same inalienable rights as straight people. But since straight people outnumber us, and pretty much control the planet, we have no choice but to wait for them to shake off their conditioned aversion to the Rainbow Tribe. Since we’re dealing with thousands of years of indoctrination, it could take a while.

That’s the reality of being queer on Planet Hetero. It sucks that straight people wield such control over of us, but then again, it’s also pretty cool that more than 300 same-sex marriage licenses have been issued in Colorado since the 10th Circuit struck down the Utah ban. There seems to be no end in sight, so I’ll stop bitching.

I would like to express my sincerest thanks to Will Perkins and Kevin Tebedo for getting the ball rolling, though. Remember them? They’re the right-wing, evangelical whack jobs largely responsible for the passage of Colorado’s Amendment 2 in 1992.

If it weren’t for them, and their cronies at Colorado For Family Values, we probably wouldn’t be where we are right now. The passing of Amendment 2 really lit a fire under the asses of the Rainbow Tribe and we rose to the challenge! Lawsuits abounded and four years later, the amendment was struck down by the United States Supreme Court. That first taste of victory emboldened and inspired us to keep fighting, and the tribe marches on.

Thirty-three years ago, drifting aimlessly through the halls of General William Mitchell High School in my hermetically sealed closet, it never once occurred to me that there would be a day that I was not living in constant fear of being “found out.”(If you were out in high school in the '70s and '80s, you might as well have hung a sign around your neck saying, “Kill Me!”) Now, a mere 30 years later, LGBT people around the globe have gained a power and status that was beyond comprehension. In Colorado, it all started with Amendment 2, so again I thank you, Will and Ted, for your truly divine intervention and for helping advance the cause of the Rainbow Tribe, though I know that wasn’t your intention.

The Lord works in mysterious ways indeed.

Christopher Curcio has lived in Colorado Springs for over 35 years and is employed by Colorado College at Tutt Library. In his spare time you will find him sleeping, napping, dozing while reading, napping while dozing and nodding off while watching America’s Test Kitchen.